Posts Tagged ‘homebrew’

We put the beers in the fridge Sunday night and Robbie cracked one open Monday night. They’re REALLY carbonated and not as hoppy as Robbie would like but the taste is pretty good!

There was sediment at the bottom so he poured it slow and didn’t get a full glass. Overall, it was fun to try brewing at home but it was a lot of work for eight beers when we could buy twelve delicious ones at Publix in ten minutes. I’m glad we tried it. Maybe the key is to do five gallon batches to make it worth all the work.

The time to bottle the beer has come and gone. We didn’t have any helpers this time and we were trying to keep the room dark for the beer’s sake so the photo quality really suffered.

This is what the beer looked like after fermenting for two weeks.

First we had to sanitize everything including all the used beer bottles.

Clean beer bottles and a jug of sanitizer.

Next we dissolved three tablespoons of honey into a half cup of water and poured that into a sanitized pot. Then we tried to use the setup that came with kit to pump the beer out of the carboy and into the pot with the honey mixture without carrying all the sediment over. The kit setup is tubing with a (crappy) clamp and a racking cane. It didn’t work out so we switched to the auto-siphon setup I bought because I read a lot of reviews where people said the kit’s plan didn’t work for them. Auto-siphon is far superior!

Once the beer was in the pot with the honey mixture we had to re-sanitize the auto-siphon and tubing then pump the beer/honey mixture into bottles. We got eight bottles total.

Happy worker bottling his beer using the auto-siphon.

Next Robbie sanitized the bottle caps and used the neat bottle capping machine I bought as part of his birthday brewing set to clamp the caps onto the bottles.

Neat bottle capping machine

Capping away

Now we wait two weeks while these precious babies sit in the darkness of our spare bedroom. I’ll be back to report on their drinkability!

On Saturday we completed step one of our first batch of homebrew. We are using a one gallon kit made by Brooklyn Brew Shop to brew their Everyday IPA. (Robbie exclusively and very selectively drinks IPA.) Our friends Conner & Tessa came over and helped out. Our puppy Sookie was here too to supervise/interfere/cute it up.

Here’s a photo of the kit box with the ingredients that came inside. It came with almost everything needed to brew the beer, but not quite. We had to get some of our own equipment in addition to the kit including a six quart stock pot (you really need 3 big pots to accomplish this), a bottle of StarSan sanitizer, a gallon of distilled water, a spray bottle, a metal funnel, and a fine mesh strainer. We used a slotted metal spoon, measuring cup, measuring spoons, and two big pots that we already had. We also bought some stuff for the bottling step which happens in two weeks but I’ll blog about that when the time comes.

Brooklyn Brew Shop Everyday IPA Beer Making Kit. You’re looking at the grain, the hops, and the yeast.

Brooklyn Beer Shop’s detailed instructions and an instructional video are available on their website so I won’t bore you with the all the details here. Enjoy a rundown of the major steps with photos!

1. Wash and sanitize EVERYTHING.

Robbie dramatically sanitizing the mesh strainer.

2. The Mash: Cook the grain in water while keeping the temperature within the desired range.

3. The Sparge: Collect the wort from the watery grain mash then recirculate the collected wort through the grain one more time.

Robbie straining the wort.

Sookie supervises the homebrewing process.

4. The Boil: Boil the wort and add the hops in stages. At the end of the boil, you give the wort an ice bath.

The wort is spinning with newly added hops.

Here’s the ice bath we created in the sink. We had to get it to down to 70 degrees before the next step.

5. Fermentation: The last part of Day 1 involves pouring the wort through a strainer and funnel into the gallon fermenter then pitching in the yeast and shaking it around. After that, we set up a blow-off tube ending in a bowl of sanitzier and put the future beer in a dark, safe place. On Tuesday we’ll switch the blow-off tube for the airlock and two weeks from Saturday we get to move on to bottling.

Tessa holds the strainer while Robbie pours the beer-to-be into the fermenter.